As more of its customers began to experience financial troubles, TD Canada Trust wanted to use its resources to help them out. But because it’s best to address problems as early as possible, TD yesterday launched a new website that encourages customers to talk about their financial hardships, and ultimately drives them to a branch.

The site features video interviews with TD Canada Trust employees sharing real-life examples of customers they’ve helped, and visitors to the site can comment on the videos – the first time that TD has opened up its site for comments. The site also provides information about how the bank can help with credit card debt, mortgage payments and bill payments, and it will be live for the next six weeks.

The media buy to promote the site, handled by MediaCom, is broad-based, says Phil Bowman, SVP customer strategy and marketing planning at TD Bank Financial Group, to reach all TD customers and because financial troubles do not mar a single demographic. It includes banner advertising on sites like Google, Yahoo, MSN and the Weather Network, as well as a search engine component. It took about three months to develop the site, a collaboration between, FCBi and the internal online team at TD.

Bowman says one of the challenges is to convince people that TD can really help. ‘We understood that there would be some level of skepticism, until we could be very credible that we are sincere in our effort – it’s not just a marketing program,’ he tells MiC.